


Loki ==> Contemplate Existence

by unseenCreator (maplepancakes)



Category: Homestuck, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:29:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplepancakes/pseuds/unseenCreator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As punishment for his crimes, Loki has been assigned community service. He must teach four new gods how to be godly and take care of their planet. What he doesn't know is that those four children will be the ones teaching him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Descend

Your name is Loki.

You knew Thor's promise was too good to be true. "Come home," he had said. Asgard is no longer your home, but you hadn't argued when he had dragged you back. You couldn't, really, since there had been a gag over your mouth. But after being beaten so thoroughly, you didn't have it in you to fight anymore. You weren't broken, just tired, and the memories of your soft bed and a warm bath made you more complacent than you would have liked to be.

It was all for naught, as you found out quickly enough. You were to be punished for your attempt at war against the humans. You suspect it has more to do with the Tesseract than any humans you may have killed, since no Asgardians except your former brother really care about them. You're thankful that at least some people have their priorities in order. 

They didn't execute you, though. You're still not sure if you would have preferred death over the punishment they decided on.

They said it was a mentorship, which seemed odd to you at the time, because you couldn't see why they would want you to teach anything to anyone. Your record isn't exactly spot-free. But the moment you arrive at the pitiful ball of dirt that can barely be called a planet, you understand exactly why you were sent there.

Besides yourself, there are four intelligent beings here, and you're really stretching the definition of 'intelligent' here. 

A Witch, who is filled with so much energy that you wouldn't be surprised if she never slept.

A Knight, who thinks he's so smart because he can rhyme his words and act stoic.

A Seer, who tries too hard to analyze everything and doesn't understand half the words she says.

And an Heir, who you could go on for ages about but can sum up as an "empty-headed ninny."

These four children—and they are children, they're barely old enough for the simplest of work—are supposedly your pupils. You're supposed to be teaching them the ins and outs of how to shape a planet in ways they see fit, but you have already decided that it is a lost cause. This planet that the four of them have been left in charge of is doomed to failure. Who decided to make children into gods, anyway? They are not up for the task, and you are certain you cannot teach them anything.

It is a prison, essentially. With almost nobody else around, you can't harm anyone or corrupt anyone. Contact to other worlds has been cut off, and you don't have the key to your escape. It is absolutely

Positively

I N F U R I A T I N G

and you are certain that you will lose what little presence of mind you have left in you.

You have a feeling that this is going to be a long stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be deviating slightly from Homestuck canon. Instead of scratching the game and going to the new session, John, Rose, Dave, and Jade were able to win their game and claim their reward. Shortly after that, the people from Asgard came across them, and they came to an agreement in regards to Loki. Most of the pre-EOA-5 events will be the same, with the key differences noted when they become important. 
> 
> The big difference worth mentioning is that the four kids all reached God-Tier and faced Jack, and ultimately they defeated him. Since the Black King and Black Queen had already been defeated by Jack, this counted as completing the win condition, and the kids were able to claim their prize.


	2. Frogs

It is the Witch who approaches you first, and it is out of necessity, not kindness. You had taken to venting your rage by destroying trees in one of the many forests on that ball of nothingness, and with each crack of a branch or crash of a trunk you felt a tiny piece of your anger leave you. It is good therapy, and you thoroughly enjoy it, since there is not much else to destroy here.

The Witch does not enjoy it, however. The first time she catches you, she tells you off for it, spouting some nonsense about hurting nature. You pretend to understand, nodding along in agreement with her words, but as soon as her back is turned you go back to what you were doing. You don't see the problem with it, it's not like these children can't make more trees.

The second time she catches you, you get another lecture, this time about how you have to help preserve the planet for the humans who will eventually be born here. You outright laugh at that idea. Humans destroy everything they touch, you tell her, and this planet will be no exception. The Witch merely pouts at you and spews some nonsense about that being their choice and not ours. You're almost offended that she counts you in that 'ours', since you want nothing to do with the Witch and her group of brats.

But you hold off on the nature destruction, for a while, since you have quelled your rage for the time being. It is several weeks before you cross paths with her again, and it is far more serious than the other two times.

In your wanderings, you came across a swamp full of frogs. Thousands of frogs, in every color imaginable, croaking away while they hop around on lily pads and fallen logs. It is absolutely ridiculous, and you wonder just who decided to make this swamp in the first place. The Heir, you think, he fancies himself a practical joker, and there is no way this mishmash of rainbow frogs is anything but a prank.

You idly poke at one frog with your foot, and it hops away into the pond. This is so stupid, you don't even know why you are bothering with it. They're just frogs, nothing more, nothing less. And there are so many of them, nobody would notice if you stepped on one entirely on accident and not out of any malice for once.

Which is exactly what you do. 

And someone notices.

The Witch is there, and she looks upset. She tells you to stop and tries to rescue the frog you had stepped on, but it is too late for the little blue and green amphibian. The Witch then yells at you for being so careless around the frogs.

It is at that point where you find the whole situation so ridiculous. It reminds you of how someone you know was so protective of humans, despite having no reason to value such an inferior species. But this is worse than that, because these are _frogs_. At least humans had some form of sentience. Who in the world gets upset over frogs?

The Witch does, apparently, and you just have to know why. So you ask her, half-expecting some nonsense response.

The reasoning you get isn't as bad as you expected, you have to admit. The Witch tells you that the frogs are part of the universe, and you just give her a look of absolute befuddlement. But then she says more. She tells you of how they made their universe in the first place, and of how they had to play a game and how the frogs were part of that game and how one of the frogs actually became the universe. Since this is the first planet in their newly-created universe, she had brought the remaining frogs here. She was the one responsible for the frogs in the game, which is why she is so sensitive about them. Or so she claims.

At that point you realize that the Witch is batty, and you decide not to tread on her precious frogs or trees anymore. You are not moved by her words, but you realize that it is probably better not to mess with a being of cosmic power when they are so riled up by something so simple. You have seen her move mountains with those powers of hers, and it is better not to anger her into using those powers on you. So you assure her that you will be more careful in the future, and this time you are at least somewhat sincere. Even though your motives are different than what the Witch is expecting, the end result is still the same.

It is through this that you learn it is a good idea to take others' feelings into account, if only to keep yourself from being harmed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had forgotten how much I like writing an unreliable narrator. |D But yes, the chapter titles should give you a hint as to what each chapter will be about.


	3. Clockwork

Your attempts at staying out of the Witch's hair have proven more successful than you could have ever dreamed. For some reason, these children seem to think that you are actually becoming for friendly. You are not, of course, but you aren't going to correct them. If they think you are 'behaving' by not breaking things, let them believe that. You yearn for freedom for their dull daily duties of forming this world in their own image, so any leeway you get is welcome, even if it is given under false pretenses.

But you have noticed that one of the children hasn't taken the same liking to you. Despite how quickly the Heir and the Witch have grown to like you, and how the Seer is at least tolerable of you, the Knight still keeps you at a distance. When the others are eager to pester you, he stands off to the side, just watching. He never approaches you, and you never approach him, so the distance between the two of you is very noticeable.

However, that distance doesn't mean he is leaving you alone. No, that pair of eyes and approving frown follows you everywhere you go, as if he were trying to catch you in the middle of some kind of despicable act. When you stay close to the 'home' these children have made he is there, leaning against a doorway or sitting on a banister. When you are out in the wild he is there, peering down at you from some tree or cliff. No matter where you go, he sees what you do.

It is starting to bother you, honestly. Not that you have any secret plans you are working on currently, but it is the principle of the matter.

It becomes a routine between the two of you. You try to find some place none of these children have been, and he tries to track you down. You can practically count down the seconds until the moment you see him, and by now it is as familiar to you as the passing of the time.

The Knight is judging you, and you are sure he does not have a favorable opinion.

He is older than the others, you have figured. He towers over everyone, even the Heir. While the other three still look like they could be clinging to their mother's skirts, the Knight looks more like a man. He is still a boy in many ways, but his height and stature put him a notch above the others. You suspect this is why he keeps an eye on you: he must be the responsible one of the group.

Your curiosity is not piqued by this, though. It takes much more than a suspicious teenager to make you interested.

Now, something like seeing two of the Knights in one place? That would get you interested. And it does, when it happens.

You hadn't meant to spy on anyone, you are sure none of them have any interesting secrets to hide. But somehow you stumble upon the Knight talking to his double, which you would have thought was some kind of illusionary magic, except there was nobody around to fool. In fact, you get the feeling that you were not supposed to see that scene at all. The Knight was relaying information about events that had happened earlier in the day to his double, who simply nodded as he listened along. Then the copy that was listening summoned up some strange round tools, and in a flash of red light he was gone, leaving one Knight behind.

You are certainly curious about the Knight now, but not enough to ask him directly. Instead, you approach the Heir about it, since he is apparently 'palhonchos' with the Knight. You are not sure what a palhoncho is, but presumably it has something to do with comradery.

So you ask the Heir about the tools, figuring that they were a way to invite discussion about the Knight's powers. You don't want to seem too interested in these children, after all. You really don't care about any of them; you just want to know what you have to deal with, should you fall on the wrong side of their wrath. As crafty as you are, you lack the physical strength some of these children have shown.

The Heir is all too happy to tell you about the Knight. He goes on and on about timetables and time powers and how the Knight is all about time. He apparently helped the Witch once, when she was breeding her frogs. You have to admit, the power to travel through time does sound lucrative, but you're not sure why the Knight isn't using his powers more. Surely he could use his powers to speed up the development of this pathetic planet, he had done so before. The Heir has no answer for that question, though.

So instead you ask the Witch, and she clarifies a few points. Apparently the Knight can only go backwards in time, not forwards, and he has to keep the timeline intact. That would certainly explain why he didn't use his powers more than he did. If one wrong step could destroy the entire universe in a paradox, you wouldn't be hasty with those powers either. You are simply glad it was the Knight who ended up with such powers, instead of the Heir.

Your curiosity gets the better of you, though, and you decide to test the Knight's powers.

First you start with small things, like tricking the Heir into thinking the Knight wants to spend time with him. So the Knight has to use his powers to both be with the Heir and follow you, but somehow he does it seamlessly, without the Heir ever knowing that there are two Knights running around. So you push it more, inviting bigger occurrences with more complex requirements for the Knight to be in every place at once. Soon you notice three or four Knights running around at a time, and you can't help but grin to yourself as you watch the events unfold. You are particularly proud of yourself for the double-date you set up with the Knight, the Seer, and the Witch, as he really had to juggle those instances to keep each girl from knowing what he was doing with the other.

You continue to build up these complex plans, messing with the Knight in more complicated ways, to which he responds smoothly and without incident. It runs as cleanly as a machine: you provide the frame, and the Knight fills it up with the different cogs and gears needed to make it run. It is absolutely fantastic to you, and watching the Knight become exasperated fills you with a joy you haven't felt in a long time.

But soon the Knight tires of this game, and he sends the gears to a grinding halt with a stern lecture. You do not appreciate this lecture at all, you are older than him and should not be lectured by a child. He seems intent on getting his point across, though. The Knight tells you that you should not be messing with him as you do, and it is a pain in the ass to keep track of everything he has to do. He tells you that stable time loops are not easy to manage, and that messing up will end with dead Knights, so the games needed to stop.

You are disappointed, because you really were having fun, but you relent for the time being. When pushed too far, someone might not respond in the way you want to. Instead of making a hilarious scene, they might get upset or stop responding to your prodding. So you learned to space out your plans, to give a break in-between for the children to be lulled into a false sense of security. After all, it does you no good if they become pushed into actually attempting to punish you. Just as the cogs and gears must turn to produce results, they must be given ample time to rest so that they will not break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit, this was probably the hardest theme to fit into this story. All the other ones have been coming along much easier (the next chapter is actually almost done, and the next two after that are planned out fully), but it took forever to get this chapter to be at least acceptable. I'm still not 100% happy with it, but it will do.


	4. Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops that was a bit of a delay >>;; Sorry about that, it took me a while to work out just where I was going with these next couple chapters. Getting Loki to realize that he needs to change but not woobifying him at the same time is really difficult.

You are quickly learning to dread the nights on this pitiful excuse for a planet.

Daytime is taxing enough. You have to keep up the act of being normal and polite, even when you have to deal with idiots like the Witch and the Heir. Sometimes your cheeks ache by the end of the day simply because of the false smiles you have to give, and listening to these children prattle on about what they're doing to shape their planet is a mind-numbing experience. But for all of the troubles you experience during the day, your nights are a thousand times worse.

The General did warn you about what failure would mean. You just never expected his attacks to come from your own mind.

The nightmares, they plague you each and every night. The fear as he hunts you down, chasing you across all expanses of the universe. The pain as he catches you, torturing your body and soul in thousands of different ways. The despair as you realize that this is your life, this is your existence. You will never again know peace.

You haven't slept through the night once, not since you were brought here. Without fail, you awaken sometime between midnight and dawn, and the remaining hours before the sun rises are always filled with restlessness. You haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks, and that makes it even harder to keep up your façade during the day.

But you persevere. If nothing else, you're good at surviving.

This night begins as all the others had. You awaken in your room, slick with sweat and gasping for air. It doesn't take long for your mind to process the fact that it was just another nightmare, that you have not been discovered yet. Another thought strikes you tonight though, once you begin to chase away the nightmares and return to a state of calmness: it is quite humid in your room.

You sit up and look out your window. It's raining, a light drizzle, with no lightning thankfully. You vaguely remember one of the children mentioning something about the rainy season starting, which would explain the sudden humidity. But it makes your skin feel clammy, even moreso than usual, and lying in damp sheets just won't do.

You decide to get up and wander around the house for a bit. Perhaps to the library, the Seer shouldn't be awake at this hour. You find her taste in literature questionable at best, but she has also supplied the library with many factual books, mostly about the world they lived in before this one. It's certainly nothing you care much about, but it's better than homoerotic fantasy novels.

As you approach the library, you realize that your previous assumption was wrong. There is a light on in the library, signaling to you that someone else is awake. For a moment you consider returning to your room. It's hard enough to deal with these children during the day, having to put up with their annoying habits after such restless sleep is likely to break through your mask you show them. 

But before you can leave, a voice calls out to you from the library. It's the Seer, as you had expected. Only she would have known it was you out here, as only her foresight would have allowed her to look through closed doors. You realize that she will question you further if you do not answer, as she has that annoying habit of trying to psycho-analyze all of your actions, so you decide to bite the bullet and go in. 

You and the Seer have an odd relationship of sorts. You find her to be the most tolerable of all the children. While she does enjoy reading people like a book, she is by far the calmest and most-reserved of all four of them, and she doesn't make ridiculous demands of you. If you had to deal with any of the four, the Seer would likely be your first choice. She is the least likely to send you into an unstoppable rage.

There is one downside to talking with her, beyond the obvious problems you have with all the children. You pride yourself on being an expert lie-smith, one who can weave a web of deception around anyone. Your silver tongue can easily trick the Witch and the Heir, and it doesn't take much more effort to get the Knight to give you the benefit of the doubt. But the Seer, she sees right through all of it. You don't know if it is because of her abilities or if she is just that good at reading people. Whatever it is, your lies do not work on her. The best you have ever managed was half-truths with the lies hidden in silence and assumptions on her part. This makes you feel weak and vulnerable, like you are naked in front of a crowd of people.

You do not like that feeling.

Still, you find yourself slipping into the chair opposite of the Seer. The table is cluttered with books, though she seems to have passed over her usual romance novels in favor of topographical maps and books on climates. It seems as though she is doing research tonight.

She asks why you are up so late, and you respond by turning the question back on her. It is stranger for her to be awake in these pre-dawn hours, a point which she concedes. But she doesn't answer the question either, and both of you sit in silence for a while, with the sound of the rain pitter-pattering against the windows of the library being the only sound to fill the room.

Eventually she tries to stir a conversation again, and she states that it has been eight weeks since you have arrived. You remark that you hadn't been keeping track, and she doesn't try to stir the conversation again. 

Instead, she asks if you would like some tea, which you decline. She still brings two cups with her on the tea tray when she returns from the kitchen a few minutes later. Belatedly you realize that you could have slipped out then, and you wonder why you didn't. Tea always means she expects a serious talk of some sort, which you do not have the patience for.

As she pours herself a cup, adding no sugar despite the fact that she brought it on the tray (there is no cream, any time you've taken tea with her you have added sugar but never cream), she asks you what you think of the world they are building. 'They' being the Seer and her friends, of course. You answer honestly, since she would know if you said anything but the truth: the planet is empty and far from being finished. You also think that it will never be finished, but you do not say that part out loud. If the Seer somehow heard that, she does not react to it.

She admits that they are far from done. She had never expected so much work to go into creating a world. It is a delicate balance, she tells you, and even the slightest change can throw off that balance. She compares it to a mind, stating that the slightest disturbance can greatly affect a person's mind as well.

You immediately get the subtext behind her worlds. You also immediately ignore said subtext.

Instead you state that all worlds are like that. All worlds are complicated, and she should have expected this work. The Seer merely nods in agreement, thereby robbing you of any smug satisfaction you could have had.

The Seer chooses that moment to lecture you about the power of friendship again. She tells you that this world will be built with the four of them, because any one of them could not do all the work by themselves. Each of them, including herself, has their strengths and weaknesses, so they rely on each other to take care of things that they cannot handle. It's the same fanfare you have heard several times by now, and you have to fight to keep from rolling your eyes.

Tonight, she adds something new to her talk of friendship. Tonight she says that, while four make a good team, five would make an even better one. This surprises you enough to keep you from responding right away. The four children had talked about friendship with you before, but never had they actually invited you to join their number.

You think back to your brother and his band of lost souls. You had thought nothing of them when you first saw them. They were nothing to you. Their infighting only made them weaker, and you could dance circles around them if you wanted to. Which you had, and it had delighted you. But in the end they stood together as one group, rather than six individuals, and they had crushed your army despite the thousand-to-one odds.

Were these children like them? Did their unity give them strength? Would a group supporting you give you that strength as well?

As quickly as that thought enters your head, you push it away. You are not a team player. You never have been, and you never will be. The Seer's offer is nothing but a polite gesture to you. You have no need for their friendship, and you have no reason to help them beyond the scope of your punishment.

You tell the Seer that her group will continue to have four members, and you leave the library. As you walk back to your room, you look outside and see the rain still falling. Rain is actually a complicated thing. It is unwelcome when it falls, and rainy days are gloomy and bring misery. Nobody likes rainy days, after all. But rain is also nurturing, and it provides the necessary nutrients for plants to grow and planets to thrive.

You are like the rain, you realize. Your very existence is a miserable thing, and nobody is ever glad to see you. You are the obstacle that must be overcome, the lone bad man who must provide the adversity which changes ordinary men into heroes. It is a lonely existence, one which you thought you had grown accustomed to, but in this moment of weakness you can't help but wonder what it would be like to be part of a team, to have others there to catch you when you fall.

But who would willingly ally themselves with a God who has fallen as far as you have?

It is through this that you learn how much you yearn for a companion, and just how painful it is to realize that you will never have one.


End file.
